2021 Jets Pro Mini Camp Preview

The first regular season game is about a month away, but the road toward that first game begins this week with the Winnipeg Jets Pro Mini Camp, which gets underway on Thursday at Bell MTS Iceplex.
A total of 19 skaters and two goaltenders will take part in the camp, which runs until Sunday.
Among those players are some familiar faces and intriguing storylines to follow, especially with training camp opening up on September 23.

FAMILIAR FACES
There are a number of names that Jets fans will instantly recognize on the mini camp roster, including first round picks Cole Perfetti, Ville Heinola, and Kristian Vesalainen. On top of that, 2018 second round pick, David Gustafsson, is also in that group of familiar names.
The only player of those four that has yet to play an NHL game is Perfetti. The 19-year-old hasn't had any shortage of experience playing the pro game, however. During the 2020-21 campaign, Perfetti had 26 points in 32 games with the American Hockey League's Manitoba Moose. He bookended those games with a silver medal performance at the 2021 IIHF World Junior Championship and a gold medal at the 2021 World Hockey Championship in Riga, Latvia.
As for Gustafsson, Heinola, and Vesalainen, the trio combined to play 21 NHL games in 2020-21 (combined, they've played 56 NHL games in their careers). Vesalainen also played his first four games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs as well.
This week's camp, a few days ahead of Jets main training camp, will be an opportunity for all four players to get their games where they want as the battle for roster spots begins.
THE NEXT STEP
Two staples on the Manitoba Moose blue line - and of the Winnipeg Jets prospect pipeline on defence - are looking to build on impressive seasons in 2020-21.
For Samberg, last season was his first at the professional level after a successful NCAA career at the University of Minnesota-Duluth where Winnipeg's second round pick in 2017 won back-to-back national titles with the Bulldogs. Samberg, 22, had seven points in 32 games with the Moose.
As for Kovacevic, the 24-year-old capped off his season with a stretch of 11 points in 10 games and was also a +14, which led the AHL in that span. Kovacevic put pen to paper on a new one-year contract in the off-season and has 28 points in 75 AHL games since 2019.
WELCOME TO WINNIPEG
Speaking of defencemen, three more defencemen to keep an eye on this week are Simon Lundmark, Tyrel Bauer, and Dmitri Kuzmin.
Kuzmin is part of Winnipeg's most recent draft class, taken in the third round and at 82nd overall. The defenceman had five points for Belarus in the Under-18 tournament and was named a Top 3 Player on his team.
He was supposed to play for the Ontario Hockey League's Flint Firebirds in 2020-21, but with the OHL season cancelled, the 18-year-old stayed in Belarus and played 46 games with Dinamo-Molodechno.
One draft class earlier than Kuzmin, Tyrel Bauer is coming off his first season as captain of the Seattle Thunderbirds in the Western Hockey League. In 23 games last season, Bauer had seven points. The left-shot defenceman from Cochrane, AB has played in 149 WHL games, recording 38 points and will be attending his first camp in Winnipeg this week.
Also appearing in Winnipeg for the first time is Lundmark, who was taken in the second round of the 2019 NHL Draft. Since that selection, the right-hand shot Lundmark has spent time in both the SHL and in the J20 leagues with Linkoping HC.
The majority of that time was spent in the SHL, though, and Lundmark has seen incremental improvement statistically over the last three seasons. He's played more games (from 28 in 2018-19 to 47 in 2020-21) and saw his point total creep up from three to 10 points over that span.
FAR FROM HOLM
Since being drafted in the sixth round of the 2017 NHL Draft, goaltender Arvid Holm has continued to improve his game in his home country of Sweden.
His 0.914 save percentage in 24 games with Farjestad BK of the Swedish Hockey League was eighth best in the league, a personal improvement of two spots over his 10th place finish in that stat in 2019-20.
The Swedish product signed his three-year, entry level contract with the Winnipeg Jets on June 15, 2020. No doubt a fantastic reward for his 2019-20 season, where he was ranked inside the SHL's top 10 in not only save percentage, but wins, saves, and goals against average as well.
GETTING A SHOT
Part of the intrigue of this time of season are the players that are invited to camp for tryouts, and this year's Mini Camp is no different.
One name that stands out is that of Evgeny Svechnikov, who played in 21 games with the Detroit Red Wings last season scoring three times and finishing with eight points. Svechnikov, the older brother of Carolina Hurricanes forward Andrei Svechnikov, signed a one-year contract with the Manitoba Moose in late August and will be doing all he can to perhaps earn a look at the NHL level.
Evan Polei has yet to play an NHL game, but the 6'2", 230-pound left winger has been with three American League organizations (Bakersfield, San Antonio, and Cleveland) before signing with the Manitoba Moose on August 17. In 120 AHL games, Polei has 39 points.
The same day the Moose announced Polei's two-year deal, they also announced the one-year contract agreement with goaltender Philippe Desrosiers. The 26-year-old played 29 games with Springfield in 2019-20, finishing 16-10-2 record. He spent the entire 2020-21 campaign on the taxi squad with the Florida Panthers.
The fourth player in camp on a tryout is Haralds Egle, a 24-year-old right-winger from Latvia who played in 25 games with the Moose last season, recording five points.
Egle will be entering the second year of a two-year contract he signed with the Moose back in April of 2020.